More remarkably, he said, “I was instructed not to allow the RSO [Regional Security Officer], the acting deputy chief of mission and myself to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz.” He had never before been given such instructions with respect to a Congressional delegation.

A lawyer from State had tried to accompany him to his meeting with Chaffetz, and after the meeting he got a displeased phone call from Hillary confidante Cheryl Mills. After that, he said, he was “effectively demoted.”

Shocking stuff, bearing directly on the question of whether the Obama administration orchestrated a cover-up of the true nature of the terrorist attack — and giving an ironic meaning to Jay Carney’s absurd claim concerning the “remarkable level of cooperation that we’ve demonstrated with Congressional committees and investigators thus far.” Remarkable, indeed. I guess you could use that word to describe obstruction of justice.

So.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you were a complete partisan hack, totally in the tank for Obama, and you wanted to blunt the force of Hicks’s testimony regarding Benghazi. How would you go about whitewashing today’s hearings? I think you would follow this strategy:

You would report today’s hearings as if nothing particularly significant had happened.

You would prominently note that today’s hearings have been described by Democrats as partisan.

You would note that a “independent” accountability review board had found no misleading behavior on the part of the Obama administration — ignoring questions that have been raised about the lack of thoroughness of that review board’s investigation.

You would bury anything hurtful to the Obama administration deep down in the story, giving it virtually no prominence whatsoever — or perhaps just omit it entirely.

In one of the most hackish pieces I’ve read in this paper in ages, the Los Angeles Times coverage of Hicks’s testimony bears this headline:

Envoy describes night of Benghazi attack

The totally unremarkable deck headline?

Greg Hicks, deputy chief of the diplomatic mission in Libya, tells Congress he was on the phone with J. Christopher Stevens just before the ambassador was killed.

Here’s how this dreck opens:

Minutes after Greg Hicks learned that the perimeter of the U.S. mission in Benghazi had been breached by men with guns, he punched a cellphone number to reach Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, his immediate boss, who was at the scene.

“Greg, we’re under attack,” Stevens told Hicks, the deputy chief of the mission, Hicks testified to Congress on Wednesday.

Then the connection was lost. Hicks never spoke to his boss again. Stevens died soon afterward, as the Benghazi mission went up in flames around him.

Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were universal in their praise of the gripping, soft-spoken, minute-by-minute account they heard Wednesday from Hicks, the first public testimony from a government official who was in Libya during the assault that killed four Americans in September.

What? That’s the story? What about the revelations that lawyers tried to keep him from talking to Congressman Chaffetz? What about the retaliation Hicks suffered for questioning Rice’s rewritten and absurd talking points?

Hicks and two other State Department witnesses shed little new light on the key questions at issue in the hearing: whether there was anything more the U.S. military could have done to thwart the attack and whether the Obama administration intentionally misled the American people when officials initially said the attacks stemmed from a protest.

An independent review board has concluded that neither charge is true, but the Republican-controlled House is pressing on with investigations, with particular interest in the role of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who may run for president in 2016.

Wait, what? A highly praised individual questions the official line that this was a protest, and is suddenly the victim of blatant retaliation and is told not to talk to Congress — and none of this sheds any light on whether the Obama administration misled the public?

As for the work of that “independent” review board — convened by Hillary Clinton — Hicks was interviewed by that board, but never had a chance to read their conclusions before they were issued. Somehow, oddly enough, the board didn’t tell us everything we heard about today. And that board has faced criticism for not interviewing other key players — not that you would know that from reading today’s L.A. Times article.

Three paragraphs from the end of the piece, this tidbit is neatly buried: “Hicks said he was disgusted when he heard U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice say on television Sept. 16 that the attacks stemmed from a protest over an anti-Islamic video. There was no protest, Hicks said.” So that revelation is about as far from prominent as you can get.

What about the pressure on Hicks to keep his mouth shut? And the retaliation he suffered when he did not?

Yup, you guessed it. As remarkable as it ought to seem given that this story was written by an ostensibly professional journalist working for a large metropolitan newspaper, there is not a single, solitary word in the article about any of that.

Mr. Dilanian, did you not watch today’s hearings, or are you just furiously spinning without any regard to a huge story that might not benefit the political party to which you obviously swear allegiance? Yes, sir, it is every bit that obvious — and my question is rhetorical. I know you watched the hearings, and I know that you are hiding the truth from your readers. It is an utterly shameful performance.

Mr. Dilanian: to you and your editors on this piece of misleading garbage, I say: I hope the Koch brothers buy your paper. I hold that hope so bad I can taste it. You are obviously one of the types who say they would leave if that happened. You are exactly the type of reporter who should leave. Your story is utterly dishonest and journalistically shoddy. You belong in D.C. as an Obama flack, not in Los Angeles as a purported journalist.

Leave. Take your spin to the political machine. Get out of my city and get off the pages of my city’s newspaper.

UPDATE: You want to know how terrible a job Dilanian did on this? He makes the New York Times coverage look responsible and fair.

48 Responses to “L.A. Times Reporter Ken Dilanian and His Partisan Hackwork on Today’s Benghazi Hearings”

Thanks to the work of people like Mr. Dilanian the Koch brothers will be able to buy that rag for a dollar.

And hopefully Dilanian will be one of the people threatening to quit if that happens who actually does so. I’d hate to be one of the Koch brothers and actually have to pay this Democratic party operative a severance package.

I hope the Koch brothers buy your paper. I hold that hope so bad I can taste it.

Either that or it goes out of business.

Regrettably, I think just about any of the leading newspapers — regardless of political slant — based in any of the major cities in the US will always have enough viability to somehow survive, no matter what. Sort of analogous to a pack of zombies.

So I can only hope that the contemptibly biased newspapers becomes so emaciated — that they become so technically, financially and operationally marginalized — that they end up with all the impact and credibility of The Globe or Enquirer.

I was perusing hard copies of the LA Times, Washington Post and New York Times a few days ago, and let’s just say I wasn’t exactly teary-eyed over how many of their pages in today’s era are pure text (or pure contents), devoid of much of the advertising that used to weigh down such papers in the past.

If the left — including their mouthpieces known as the urban broadsheet — is going to take down America, they sure as hell deserve to go down with the rest of us.

guardian.co.uk, Michael Wolff, April 29, 2013: [A] few weeks ago, I noticed, in a small announcement in the New York Times, the appointment of a new editor at the Book Review – once a major transfer of power in New York. Indeed, the editor of the Book Review, and his or her general literary disposition, is pretty much synonymous with the Book Review itself.

[But the new editor, Pamela Paul] has, pretty much, no writerly or literary credentials… Her resume includes two years as a blogger at the Huffington Post, which, it doesn’t seem entirely churlish to point out, is not a job, and a stint writing a column for the Times’ Style section.

…So why a major post in the world of literary journalism? There is an untested assumption among some long time New York Times readers and among writers…that the NYTBR is quite a vital and even necessary part of the Times – that the identity of the New York Times is integrally related to higher culture and that there are few more important reflections of that high culture than the Times Book Review. But this, of course, is nonsense.

That day is gone. Only the awkwardness of admitting otherwise maintains the assumption of a necessary Book Review.

It quite simply has no ads. The entire newspaper is challenged by falling advertising, but the Book Review is really at the end of this road. Practically speaking, it has no revenue.

If the Koch brothers actually did buy the LA Times, they would do the same thing that any investors would do.

They would install a business staff to maximize profits while reducing expenses.

That staff would question why advertising and circulation is declining. After a whole lot of business meetings, the new owners would say: “Great and thanks for all the input, but what do we need to do to increase profits?”

I seriously doubt that the political slant of the employees would come up in the conversation.

I also doubt that any savvy businessmen would invest a lot of money in a dying business that depends on already dead trees when electrons tend to be free.

So, the owners would say: “What do we produce that no one else can produce?”

The correct answer would be: “Interesting and correct stories that affect my life on a local level.”

However, that cannot be done, because most big paper journalists are not too concerned about people. They are concerned about being the next award-winner so that their peers will tell them how smart they are. Plus Obama.

That’s part of what newspapers don’t get. When they do get hyper-local, they put their most inexperienced reporters into the field, who have no background in what they are covering. And all those inexperienced reporters just cover what some sources tell them is the truth.

Meanwhile, the good reporters sit around trying to tell everyone why Bush was stupid. Plus Obama.

Being a good, experienced writer doesn’t mean you can separate your world-view from reality. Hence, the modern MSM.

Don’t get me started. Wait, I already did.

Regardless, unless the Koch brothers really want to be the next Murdoch, I don’t see why they would see investing in the LA Times would be a good idea.

13.–it would be an act of mercy and humanity on their part. Like adopting a three legged dog who’s at death’s door from a shelter, or buying overpriced “World’s Greatest Chocolate” bars to support a local girls’ softball team. It costs you money but it makes makes you feel good to help and you know you can change some lives for the better. That’s why the Kochs should do it.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD): And, as I listen to your testimony I could not help but think of something that I said very recently — two years ago now — in a eulogy for a relative. I said that death is a part of life, so often we have to find a way to make life a part of death.

Wait, the “independent review” being mentioned in the news is the ARB? The Accountability Review Board with 4 members of 5 members chosen by the Secretary of State, those members being state department employees, the ARB which reported directly to the Secretary if State, and was tasked with examination of the actions of Secretary of State (they found their boss was blameless. surprise, surprise), that ARB performed the independent review some news folks have been mentioning?

Although unlikely, I am willing to accept that it is within the realm of possibility that a group like the ARB could perform a good quality review and cover the pertinent issues thoroughly and objectively. But Good Lord, how big do one’s stones have to be to call it “independent’?

And most of the writers and editors at the Tribune Corp–(especially those at the dog trainer) probably could not even articulate what the Koch Bros stand for, believe in, or how they run their successful businesses. They just read someplace in a paper like theirs or heard Dem campaign talking points that the brothers are terrible people and you’re supposed to hate the Kochs. So they do.

It did not begin with the Bork hearings. As a high school student, I was selected to watch the Army-McCarthy hearing and write a paper. I watched the entire hearings & saw how the media (newspapers, magazines, radio & TV mis-reported the hearings. Only because the NYTimes printed the complete daily transcript of the hearings (Journal of Record, you know) was I able to prove that my account of the hearings was accurate and that the media had mis-informed the public.

In the “media and you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up-dept”
(disclaimer, all of the following subject to crowd-source confirmation)

I saw a blurb yesterday, but did not track it down, that Attkinson has been accused/reprimanded by CBS for her reporting on Benghazi “being too much like advocacy” or some such…
and I heard this am via Beck…
that the head of CBS news is the brother of someone high in the speechwriting of president Obama, who (from another source) may actually be the person who scrubbed the “talking points” on benghazi

Both hilarious and sickening to see people of the left accusing others of dogmatism. They remind me of all the nitwits who say the media isn’t dominated by liberalism (and liberals) because, well, it’s owned by corporate interests. The dishonesty of such people is breathtaking. They’re so disingenuous they can’t at least say they favor liberalism owning and running a newspaper because leftism makes them happy.

And greed is on full display here, because the government-employee unions and their lackeys know which belief system affords them a comfy, happy, snug lifestyle.

nytimes.com: An effort by two conservative billionaires to take over The Los Angeles Times and seven other newspapers is setting off a firestorm of opposition here. Public employee unions, the leaders of the State Legislature and liberal advocacy groups are moving to block the sale, denouncing it as a threat to public workers and Democratic Party issues.

Ten public employee unions on Thursday sent a letter to the largest shareholder in the Tribune Company, which owns the newspapers, urging it not to sell to the billionaires, David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch. The Kochs have championed legislative efforts to cut public pension benefits and the power of public unions, notably in Wisconsin.

The prospect that the Koch brothers, notorious in Democratic circles for their heavy financing of conservative candidates and causes, could run The Los Angeles Times has struck a nerve in this liberal corner of the country. The Times, if somewhat diminished by the cuts it has suffered over the years, remains a powerful influence in public life here and its existence is integral to the modern history of Los Angeles.

The resistance is not only here. In Chicago on Wednesday, demonstrators protested outside the headquarters of The Chicago Tribune, which is also owned by the Tribune Company, about the possibility of a Koch takeover.

The two Democratic leaders of the State Legislature — Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem of the Senate, and John A. Pérez, the speaker of the Assembly — announced on Wednesday that they would oppose the sale. Both men control seats on the boards of California’s major pension funds.

“Newspapers are public trusts, and I think it is wrong for The Los Angeles Times to end up in the hands of two people who have such a pronounced rigid ideology on a whole host of issues,” Mr. Steinberg said in an interview. Mr. Pérez, in a statement, said he was “deeply concerned about media outlets being purchased to further a political agenda.”

A liberal advocacy group, the Courage Campaign, bought advertisements to run in The Los Angeles Times on Thursday urging readers to cancel their subscriptions if the Tribune Company agrees to sell the newspaper to “the right-wing Koch Brothers.” More than 1,000 people have pledged to cancel their subscriptions, said Rick Jacobs, the head of the campaign. while 110,000 have signed petitions opposing the sale.
“The Koch brothers would use the newspaper in an extremist and ideological way,” said María Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, A.F.L.-C.I.O. “And I’m saying that even though I believe the current L.A. Times is not particularly labor friendly.”

How did this nation that once loved freedom become a nation that thirsts for tyranny?

I don’t think it is a thirst for tyranny, per se, but blindness. Few people say “I’m going to do evil today”, but rather what they want to do is simply more important to them than the evil they must do to accomplish their goal. For example, a politician does not set out to violate their morals or screw over their constituents, but they will do so because the desire to be liked, to enjoy the luxuries of being an elite, to belong become more important than fulfilling their constituents desires and remaining men and women of integrity.

So to with this. The L.A. Times isn’t deliberately urging tyranny (remember, the left believes their side will magically stop any evil tactics they use today once they’ve won for good). No, they simply wish to protect their side more than to do what is morally right. Or more correctly, protecting their is what is morally right.

I’ve increasingly noticed that the left has no real center, no real beliefs, nothing. The only thing they believe in is a petty tribalism. Us versus Them. Their tribe versus our tribe, and there may be crimes within their tribe, but the ultimate crime is to help the other tribe or hurt their own, and all other evil is subordinate to that. A Man(D) commits murder, but since hurting the tribe is a greater evil than even murder, anything and everything is justified to keep it out of the news up to and including attacking his victims and saying they deserved it.

Really if you look at it through the lens of tribalism as the ultimate morality, everything the left does makes sense.

So to be sure tyranny is evil, but again, hurting their side is the ultimate evil and so even tyranny is tolerable if it means they win. This isn’t a conscious decision of course. Few people would make sure a decision consciously, so they have to lie to themselves about it as surely as they do us (hence why they tell themselves “our side is virtuous and we would never be oppressive if we only had unlimited power, and if we ever were it would justified”)

Thank you so much, Pat, for this. I haven’t blogged about media bias in quite awhile because it’s so maddog tiring to accurately and properly express my outrage.

This reminded me of the November 1997 wall-to-wall coverage on all three broadcast networks of the House Judiciary Committee testimony of Kenneth Starr, the special counsel appointed to preside over the sprawling investigations surrounding the Bill and Hillary Clinton’s failed Whitewater land deal in Arkansas. I remember it like it was just yesterday…(cue the “dream harp” sound effect)…

The whole thing began with newly-elected President Clinton and the Democrats agreeing to the investigation, which he insisted would clear his and Hillary’s name; Jerry Brown, who ran in the Democrat pack to challenge George H. W. Bush in 1992, first made the accusation the Whitewater situation was evidence of not only Bill’s corruptness, but Hillary’s as well. The Whitewater Investigation eventually encompassed all accusations of misdeeds by the Clinton White House, including the sexual harassment suit by former Arkansas secretary Paula Jones, which led to the deposition in which President Clinton committed perjury about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

(In the words of the Eagles in “Life In The Fast Lane”: Are you with me so far?)

Lewinsky, whose juicy phone conversations about her fellatio follies in the Oval Office were recorded by colleague Linda Tripp, was exposed by Tripp’s literary agent, Lucianne Goldberg, a former operative in the Nixon Administration. Clinton operatives set about trashing the reputation of Lewinsky (and Tripp and Goldberg) in the same way they did Jones. When she flipped and testified to the Grand Jury about her o-fair with Slick Willie, it all came to a head (no pun intended, honest) when the House Judiciary held hearings before a final vote for or against impeachment. Ken Starr faced the panel alone from the early morning late into the night, and in the face of rude, dismissive scoldings by the likes of Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer, John Conyers, and Clinton’s own personal counsel David Kendall. Far from being the wild-eyed puritanical zealot that the likes of Michael Moore suggested he was, Starr calmly, respectfully, and forcefully decimated all arguments that perjury isn’t a serious felony (and thus an impeachable offense) because “everybody lies about sex.”

I emailed Goldberg, who was as delighted as I was with Starr’s performance. I wrote to her: “I hope he goes home to his wife, has a glass of wine or two with his favorite meal for dinner, and a love-filled night, because tomorrow morning, the media will pretend that he didn’t win.”

39. Great reminiscences, LN. Thanks for yet another example of how long we’ve all been under attack by the media as they go about the business of protecting Dems and trashing Rs at any opportunity. (Although I felt like I needed another shower after your vivid reminder of l’affaire Clinton.) I wonder how later presidents handle the inevitable requests from their guests and foreign leaders who want to to see the infamous anteroom off the oval office–the scene of the “crime”.

As dismaying as it was to see the MSM run interference for Clinton, even I was flabbergasted what happened when Obama caught fire. The never-ending effusive praise for Obama was irritating enough when it seemed all he was doing was running for name recognition, perhaps thinking that Hillary might select him as her running mate and he’d run himself in 2016. But when he won the 2008 Iowa caucus, the very same reporters who were ready to “measure the drapes” for Senator Clinton threw her overboard, even going as far to accuse Bill Clinton — once accepted by Toni Morrison as “Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime” — of racism. That’s when I realized everyone right of center was in serious trouble. This was the new low watermark, and journalism as we once knew it was on life support.

If there was any doubt that Sean Hannity is dead-on when he says “Journalism is dead,” Steve Kroft’s remark that perhaps the reason why Obama likes to be interviewed by him on 60 Minutes is “because I think he knows we’re not going to play ‘gotcha’ with him.”

Think about that, if you remember the heyday of Mike Wallace. 60 Minutes used to be feared by Presidents like the grim reaper. Now, Obama calls up Kroft and says he wants a segment to just sit beside Hillary and talk about how great a job did as Secretary of State, and Kroft just plays along.

« After surviving, with luck and persistance, tabloid accounts of
marital infidelity, while his campaign struggled back in New Hampshire,
early in the year, Mr. Clinton and a cadre of aides now have a system in
place that has so far managed to limit each new round of damaging
reports to a 36-hour news cycle.

“You try to figure out what they think they’ve got and marshal every
possible resource” to combat it, said George Stephanopolous, the deputy
campaign manager…..

The best approach, campaign advisers have discovered, is to construct a
series of “fire walls” to protect themselves against allowing bad news
to spread. Campaign aides first take their side of the story to the news
services, then to television networks and then to reporters for
major competing newspapers.

“from our point of view, stories are only damaging if they run like a
wildfire through the media chain, ” Mr. Stephanopolous said. » -
article by Gwen Ifill on page 16 of the Sunday March 29, 1992 New York
Times.

In other words, it’s not WHAT is known, but HOW MANY people know it.

This may seem very clever, but actually this is based on the sort of
thing Jimmy Carter did. If indeed Clinton is better, it is only because
like Isaac Newton said, he is standing on the shoulder of giants.

A little while ago someone posted something about media noninformation.
Well, here’s a real thing – and this is not an April Fools joke.

» There have been constant, though undocumented, reports of articles
that were never published because the Clinton damage controllers went on
full alert before final publication decisions were made.

This works “more often than you think, ” Mr. Stephanopolous said »
- another excerpt from that article entitled:

Political Memo When
Trouble’s Ahead, Clinton’s Staff is Ready

By Gwen Ifill on page 16 of the Sunday, March 29, 1992 New York Times.

Now you may be thinking, if this is so, why is Mr. Stephanopolous,
Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, confirmiong this???

This must be Clinton Bluff Rule numbrr 19:

When something is known to a reporter, confirm it. The information then
is far less likely to be headlined or emphasized. If they don’t the
reporter will come on with the air of making a claim – the other way, it
will be portaryed matter of factly, and not circulate that much.

Actually, I have begun to see that the Clinton campaign has a special
limited hangout strategy for the New York Times. Not everything gets
told. but things get confirmed for them that don’t appear in other
places.

1) Clinton’s defeat for Governor was mentioned in a long profile of him.

2) The correct date – 1979 – when Hilary Clinton became a member of the
Rose Law Firm was mentioned in an article by Jeff Gerth about Clinton
rewriting a law so as to exempt himself that appeared on Friday March
27, rather than the apprently more usual 1980, which the Feb. 14, 1992
Forward had.

« There’s no question that young partners, who in the past would
have gotten down on their knees and thanked the Supreme Being in the
law firm if somebody said they could be a partner, are asking tougher
questions. » Bradford H. Hildebrandt as quoted in an article in the
New York Times about lawyers not being anxious to become partners
anymore because of possible legal liabilities, on page D8 of the Wed.
April 1, 1992 New York Times.

The point here is how difficult it is to become a partner. Yet Hilary
Clinton was hired in 1977, the year her husband became Arkansas Attorney
General, and became a partner in 1979, the year her husband first
became Governor. Ther’s a rebuttable presumption that something wrong
is going on here – a presumption that has not been rebutted, because
I’ve heard nothing about how she became a partner so fast. Hilary
Clinton may have gone a bit overboard in defending herself , in talking
about careers, but that’s not the point, She almost certainly got his
because here husband was Governor.

3) Hilary Clinton told the New York Times (earlier in the year) that she
handled Stephens Inc business at the Rose Law Firm. She had repetedly
denied that to local newspapers.

4) The questionsand information in the article on page 16 of the Sunday
March 29, 1992 New York Times, admitting that the Clinton campaign had
suppressed critical news articles – and saying it had happened more
often than the reporter writing that currently thought.

When I read that, I said to myself – so THAT’S maybe what happened to
the Village Voice article that was going to reveal that black members of
the Arkansas state legislature hjad NOT wanted the state civil roghts
bill not to go forward, and also noting that not one of them had
endorsed Clinton.